106 TheLord&Taylor Look is the new Arnel knit ..::- . ""'. 1"'" '.... t .II '; # : '...:. ;.; ,," .-,{ \ .-",", .,. J", f;' i - ,'" '.',<, ' '.... :.; < 1 f , , f 'i 1: The innocent sophisticate-middy and pleated skirt done in this new Arnel knit. Crunchy, silky-fine - washable and wrinkle-defying. (Clever Arnel does it again.) By Anne Fogarty in Waumbec's textured double-knit of Arnel triacetate. Navy with white. 4-14. About $65. At Lord & Taylor, New York. 'Celanese<!J Arnel æ C 4P CONTEMPORARY FIBERS LETTER FROM PARIS ) FEBRUARY 11 G ENERAL DE GAULLE'S recent press conference under the crystal chandeliers of the Palais de l'Élysée-where, in continuance of his stately custom, even at the age of seventy-four, he recited an hour-and-a- quarter speech from memory-seemed in many ways the most stimulating lec- ture he has given us on yesterday's European his- tory. It was a talk on French policy in which, for once, as French jour- nalists noted, he spoke "avec s( rlllit/;." He seemed to function with ease, knowing himself to be unique in his protean faculties and in his protean position as the only glob- al-minded statesman now still both alive and in office, and as the only pro- fessional historian who is also a Presi- dent, and vice versa. Certainly the im- print of history was visible even in the date he chose for the press meeting, which was February 4th, the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the con- ference in the Yusupov Palace, at Yalta, where the map of Europe was in part redrawn by the Big Three, all non-Europeans-Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill. The national leaders of the period are all dead now, except the uninvited de Gaulle. For him, with his historiographical brain and his Gallic heart, which so acutely recalls all its past bittern esses, February 4th, as it was passed in that remote, unseen palace, must represent the blackest, blankest day in his career. In last week's ;Vouvel Observateur, the open- ing article, called "Ce Qui Obsède de Gaulle," states that though the Gen- eral has changed his mind "a hundred, a thousand" times about Indo-China, Germany, Algeria, China, the French Empire, and even Europe since Yalta, his continuing, unalterable "obsession [is] to return to France its 'rank.' This rank is at the head of a Europe become 'one of three planetary powers and, if necessary one day, the arbitrator between the Soviet and the Anglo- Saxon camps.' " De Gaulle's press-conference refer- ence to Europe as "the mother of mod- ern civilization" and to the United States as "her daughter" sounded some- what coolly unpaternal to Le Monde's editor, who commented, of the United States, "She is a big girl now, who has succeeded in life. It would seem quite difficult to call upon her only in case of grave danger to the ancestral ,..... home"-as, after all, France has done twice when attacked by Germany. Nor does all the French press agree with de Gaulle's conclusion that since the problem of a reunited Germany is the dominant problem of Europe, the de- cision of whether or not to have a sin- gle Germany in the future should be made by the Europeans themselves, without any aid from the so-called Anglo-Saxons. .For, it is argued, both the American Anglo-Saxons and the English ones, as signers of the Potsdam Agreement, are surely en- titled to say their own little word on the reuniting of Germany-such as yes or no. The reaction to the press conference showed that the proposed reëstablish- ment of the gold standard was far more interesting to the French public than a possible reunification of Germany, all of which seemed perfectly normal, the word "gold" always having its own magic. General de Gaulle's press-con- ference attack on the gold-exchange standard, by means of which the dollar, the pound, and gold are freely converti- ble for the settlement of international debts, was immediately recognized here, in London, in \Vashington, and all over Europe as the biggest monetary chal- lenge since the war. His paean to gold, inspired bv the often expressed convic- tions of his orthodox economist Jacques Rueff, of the Académie Française, who is also a member of the Institut, was in- deed a burst of glittering oratory. The General said, "This is the truth. There is no real criterion except gold. A h, oui, the nature of gold does not change. It can be used equally well in ingots, bars, and coins. It has no nationality. It is eternally and universally accepted as the unalterable fiduciary value par excellence." According to a financial authority writing in Le M onde, "it is not only these positive virtues and the economic puritanism of the gold stand- ard that please de Gaulle. A return to the practices employed before the war of 1914 would also reduce the present so-called imperialism of the dollar and the aggressiveness of American busi- nessmen, who are investing at a great rate in Europe"-a simple, rather anti- American statement that was perfectly comprehensible to French adults. But the explanation of the gold-exchange standard given by the Academician Rueff baffled most adults. He said that its principle was the same as that of children playing marbles, who at the